


End where you begin

by the_authors_exploits



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Prompt Fill, Reverse Narrative, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 10:20:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9888803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_authors_exploits/pseuds/the_authors_exploits
Summary: Nonnie said: Hi! If you are still taking songs, could I request 'Roots' by Imagine Dragon with Jason or sumthin?





	

**Author's Note:**

> [cross posted on ace--jace](http://ace--jace.tumblr.com/post/157598774559/hi-if-you-are-still-taking-songs-could-i-request); [song here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yewHN-onqKY)

_Don’t throw stones at me_

Red Hood rolls his shoulders; once, twice together, then out of sync. His right rolls back, his left rolls back, then his right; his hand twitches at his side and he hears Batman over the tapped comms for a moment.

His eyes slowly turn towards a rooftop down the way; there’s a small silhouette there, its cape billowing in the wind and a bostaff clutched in its hands. Batman’s voice raises higher.

“And keep an eye out for Red Hood; you know how dangerous he can be.”

The silhouette stiffens, but Jason turns away; his eyes darken beneath his hood, and he grips one of his handguns tight. He has business to do.

_Trouble finds me_

Jason patches up his shoulder, cuts the stitches from his hand, wraps everything in gauze and lays down; he swallows some pain pills, sighs into the quiet night. He shouldn’t have shot at Batman, but he doesn’t regret trying to blow them all up. That had been glorious, and for the first time after his resurrection he’d felt alive.

He closes his eyes, knows his polished helmet is resting on his bedside table next to a glock, ready for another fight tomorrow.

_Im going back to my roots, rock bottom_

He doesn’t want to cry; but he is, tears dripping down his face as Joker laughs under his arm; he ducks lower beneath Joker’s shoulder, hand itching over the trigger.

“Me or him! You have to choose.”

But Batman just turns his back, steps away, choosing to let them both drown and rot.

_Had to lose my way, To know which road to take_

Jason knows he missed a length of time, between his grave and the Pit; he knows there are unexplained months that he can’t name, unexplained injuries. A small scar on his knee, his finger bent strangely, his ear missing a small chunk on the curve.

When he chokes on the green liquid he knows something is wrong, missing, not right; so when Talia wraps him in a blanket and smiles—something sinister and manipulative—he accepts her kind nails across his cheek and a promise to make it all better.

_Trouble found me_

The coffin is confining, and Jason’s lungs can work—enough to scream and cry and call out for his once-father—but there’s not enough air; his nails scratch into the wood, until they’re torn out, until his hands smooth blood into the grooves.

His voice is hoarse by the time he’s pulled the panels apart and dirt fills his lungs; he scrabbles, screams past the dirt, chokes and splutters until the moon caresses his cut cheek and he heaves air that feels weightless.

_All I looked forward, Washed away by a wave_

The breath of life; it’s poetic, in ways, and incredibly literal. Breath is life, from the flowers that convert carbon dioxide into oxygen, from the inhaling of oxygen to infuse blood with, to the blood traveling to organs and extremities, feeding the brain so it can fire synapses for the heart to pump the blood and the lungs to expel the carbon dioxide. It’s a cycle that should not be broken, at least not until its intended time.

But this cannot be the intended time, because Jason is only a kid fighting a war too big to win; he lays on the cold concrete floor in a pool of his own blood. The numbers tick down steadily, his glazed eyes staring straight at them.

He’s not breathing.

_Hell will always come before you grow_

Bakchand, forehand; better one or two… A chuckle or a shrieking laugh. There is no true answer, and Jason grits his teeth when the crowbar makes contact again, cracking against his skin, bones groaning. He wasn’t supposed to be here, crushed beneath the Joker’s boot, but things happen.

Hell happens, and so Jason grits his teeth and bares it because he’s Robin and no one can clip Robin’s wings.

_Trouble found me, trouble found me_


End file.
